Aster and I had a bit of a rest the next day. I went through some of my footage from the past few days deleting a lot of the redundant shots in the early morning. Then I went to the lookout to try and get the internet to work on my sim card. It was an infuriating process made worse by my limited Spanish. I spent an hour on the phone to customer service until I could speak to an English speaker who ultimately set my sim up. Later in the day Rebeca finally arrived at the station for the first time. She gave us a tour of the garden, explained all of the the plants we could make use of. The garden is brimming with edible or useful plants. There are pineapples, coconuts, cacao (the flesh of which that surrounds the beans is delicious), lemongrass that we used for tea, wild coriander, sugar cane, lemons, fruta de pan (or bread fruit) which tasted a lot like potato when boiled, wild garlic and the list goes on. To think we’d had rice and beans for nearly three days when we could have been treating ourselves like this was a little crushing but it was nice to know we now had such a variety of food we could fall back on without immediately having to go to the shop. She also pointed out a number of different jobs that we should get on with next few days in preparation for when the next guests arrive. Not long after Rebeca left again were alone in the jungle again.
Later in the evening as I walked around the table in the middle of the kitchen when cooking, I was an inch away from standing barefoot on another cat eyed snake that had found shelter in the corner of the room. Without taking the risk of checking what snake it was, I immediately jumped backwards fearing it might have been a fer-de-lance. I shooed it out of the kitchen with a stick only to find another snake making its way through the living area. It was another reminder that we were in their home, they were not in ours. The snakes were clearly continuing their journey down to the river in search of frogs but at that moment.
Day 8
Aster and I had no way of checking but we both concurred in the morning that the heat and humidity was particularly unbearable today. Despite it being the last thing either of us wanted to do, we continued gardening and started some of the jobs that Rebeca had set us. I encountered yet another fer-de-lance while raking the leaves away from underneath a plant. It immediately coiled up into its striking pose like we had seen a few days earlier but luckily again it was only a small one. These snake encounters were becoming far too frequent for my liking. This was a turning point in taking necessary precautions to avoid getting bitten. Before that point I didn’t always wear shoes or think too much when working between bushes. After a few hours of paranoid raking I made my way into town on my own. I went later in the afternoon this time but it was still above thirty degrees celsius. Using the wifi of a hostel Aster had stayed at before she arrived at Tamandua, I topped up my phone, called my family for the first time in a few weeks.
I had to head home at around 4:30pm as it was already starting to get dark at this point. Soon enough it was and I had to use my head torch for most of the journey. This into my stay at Tamandua, apart from the constant threat of snakes I felt like I knew what I was doing and how to stay out of danger, so the walk home didn’t feel too daunting. On the walk down the gravel track into the jungle, I saw two large pairs of eyes staring back at me in the distance. As I got closer, they shot up into the sky and into the trees. Their eyes were so bright that I couldn’t see their bodies but they must have been birds. For most of the way back they repeatedly appeared about twenty metres in front of me, then disappearing into the skies again. I assume they must have been catching insects crawling across the road. Also, on the way back on a piece of gently sloping land that had been cleared a hundred or so fireflies hovered above the grass. I stood there for about 10 minutes, in awe of what I was seeing. I couldn’t help but think that it was sad that the bits of land along the road that people owned had all been cleared of their trees. But on second thought, it’s only upsetting because it contradicts my expectation of Costa Rica having a pristine environment and nature. But in reality the people here still need a place to live and make a living. The small piece of land is inconsequential compared to the scale of the forest on the Osa Peninsula. A pig on one of these bits of land gave me the fright of my life as I was getting ready to cross the second river. Assuming it was a peccary in the pitch black, I ran straight through the river with my shoes still on, completely forgetting the advice to stay still. Aster found the whole story very amusing when I got back.
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